What We Don't Know

As I wrap up my classroom teaching career, I find myself a little nostalgic.  As a result, I've been telling students and colleagues a lot of stories about my early years.  That has left me thinking quite a bit about the things I didn't know when I started.  As I have tried to convey to my students for years, you have to keep an open mind about things because you don't know where they will lead.  Allow me a little self-indulgence while I describe a few that have come to mind recently.

When I entered college, I wanted to teach physics.  Just physics.  I had only recently taken it in high school and fallen in love with it, so that's what I wanted to teach.  My advisors kept saying to me, "That job does not exist.  There is nowhere that has a position where you teach physics all day, so you have to be able to teach other things."  My degree plan included three courses in chemistry and their labs as well as four lecture/lab combinations in biology, and had reasonably good attitudes about most of those.  But, the class I was snotty about was earth science.  While I liked Dr. Meleen, I just didn't care about rocks.  If you want a textbook in good condition, you can have mine because I rarely opened it.  After doing my student teaching in physics, chemistry, and physical science, I had to defend it to a panel of three.  One of those three people was my earth science professor.  After I talked about what I had learned in my classroom experiences, he told me that he was going on a partial sabbatical for the following year and wondered if I would be interested in teaching the lab section of the course for a year.  Since I was very interested in paying rent for the year, I accepted immediately.  But, yikes!  I was now going to teach the very course I had blown off.  I remember calling my mom the day before I started in a panic, saying, "But I don't know anything about rocks."  It didn't take long to figure it out because I am, above all else, a learner.  But it was a big lesson for me in keeping an open mind.  

I've been packing up things from my classroom for a couple of weeks now, and one of those things is my calculator.  That little device is twice as old as the students I teach, and I have used it to calculate scores for every test of my career, including last week's exams.  My trusty TI-81 is likely on its last legs.  I'll be sad when it finally dies.  Much like my proofreading sweater, high school backpack, and penny loafers, I won't be able to bring myself to toss it out and will place it on a shelf as a piece of objet d'art.  I've lived a lot of life with that calculator since I got in in the 10th grade.  But here's what I thought about this week.  I didn't want to buy that calculator.  It was the first year that graphing calculators had become available, and the school required it for Algebra II.  I was resistant because they were so expensive.  When they told me that I would not be able to pass Algebra II without it, I had to wonder how people had passed it the year before, when they didn't exist.  This calculator that I now love is something I didn't want to have.

There's so much we don't know before it happens.  I didn't know I would love physics before I took it and almost didn't take the honors section.  I gave up the chance to take art with one of the best art teachers in the region because I was intimidated.  I didn't know I would love putting together yearbooks.  I didn't know I would one day teach students over a computer screen.  I didn't know that attending the Learning and the Brain conference would one day lead me to an interest in teaching teachers or writing a book.  I didn't know joining the Y after I gave up the yearbook would lead to a change of mission in my life.  

We can't see the future.  We can barely see one or two steps ahead of our own feet.  But, as I've written in quite a few yearbooks recently, "Keep looking to the Lord, and he'll lead you in the way you are supposed to go."  He knows what we don't know.

Reflections on Legacy at 48

I turned 48 this week.  That means I have likely lived around half of my life, perhaps even a bit more.  Because I am also changing careers in a few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about the legacy I will leave behind.  The Bible talks about the brevity of life, comparing it to short-lived wildflowers and vapor.  Yet there are also references to what you do lasting for generations to come.  What does our short time on this earth mean?  How will things be different when you are no longer here?

Author Drew Dyck addresses something in his book Just Show Up that has stuck with me.  He talks about his early days with his wife and their discussions that they wouldn't lead ordinary lives.  They would "change the world."  He goes on to describe why that thought is not necessarily Biblical.  Most individuals to do not have the time or resources to "change the world" and are, therefore, not called to do so.  He suggests that living ordinary acts of faithfulness is what we are called to do and that if we all did that, it would, in fact, change the world.  We just wouldn't feel pressured to do it all by ourselves.  

I attend an Anglican church now, and one of my favorite parts of the liturgy is the post-communion prayer, which says, in part, "Send us out to do the work you have given us to do."  I love the plainness of that statement.  It's an everyday thing, not a big event thing.  If every day, I am doing whatever God has put in front of me to serve Him, those days and actions will add up to the legacy I leave behind.  This means I don't have to live a long life or accomplish something big to leave a legacy.  It means we can use whatever gifts we have to glorify Him and serve others at any age.

I'm the same age as Whitney Houston, Harvey Milk, Scott Joplin, and Curly (of The Three Stooges) were when they died.  I have lived the same number of years as James Clerk Maxwell (deep cut for the nerds). These people obviously have wildly different legacies, but what they have in common is that God gave them gifts (musical ability, intellect, comic ability, charisma) and expected them to use those gifts to serve Him and love their neighbors.  Not everyone has used their gifts for good - I'm also the same age Joseph McCarthy was when he died - but they all had that ability and responsibility.

Accomplishing something with your life does not have to come from living a long time.  I'm twice the age reached by James Dean and Biggie Smalls.  I'm 10 years older than JFK Jr, Flo Jo, and George Gershwin were when they died.  I've achieved eight years more than John Lennon, Edgar Allan Poe, and Lenny Bruce, and I've lived six years longer than Elvis Presley and Gilda Radner.  Think what we would have lost if they had waited until they reached middle age to start using their gifts.

The woman pictured here is Alice Ball.  She was a chemist and is most notable for having been the first woman and the first African-American to earn a Master's degree from the University of Hawaii.  She developed an oil extract that served as the most effective known treatment of leprosy until the 1940's.  She accomplished all of this early because she was 24 years old when she accidentally inhaled chlorine gas while teaching a class and died instantly.  It's a good thing she did not think she should wait until she was older to use her gifts.

On my birthday this week, I received a number of lovely notes from students.  Most of them were about the way I teach, which I appreciate a lot as I have worked hard to develop that.  The most touching one, though, was an email from a girl I haven't taught since three years ago.  I will protect her privacy by not telling you the details of what she said, but it began with "You have quite literally changed my life."  What she then proceeded to tell me were about conversations I don't remember but evidently led to her dealing with anxiety and medical issues I didn't even know she had.  I'm always awed and humbled by the influence teachers wield that we may not even recognize, and how simple everyday actions and conversations that aren't memorable to one person may be powerful for another.  Teachers aren't the only ones who have that, but we have more opportunities than others to exercise it.  

I know I have rambled a bit, so let me return to my main point.  Accomplishing something with your life isn't about waiting to do something big.  God's will is not out there somewhere, waiting for you to find it. It's about taking whatever gifts you have been given and properly viewing them as opportunities to serve God and love others as outlined in I Peter 4:10, which says "Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms."  

Do that each and every day for however many days God gives you, and the world will be better for having had you in it.  Your legacy will be the influence you have had on someone and the resulting influence they have one someone else, and so on.  

Small Yet Powerful

I'll never forget one Friday in my high school physics class.  Mr. Barbara showed us a video that began with an aerial shot over an American city.  It then zoomed out to show how small the city was compared to the country, and zoomed out more to show how small the country was compared to the Earth.  As the view continued to widen, the planet on which we live receded to a pale, blue dot, which then disappeared as the solar system became a tiny speck on the edge of the Milky Way.  The video ended as even our galaxy disappeared into the immensity of the universe.  The bell rang, and Mr. Barbara wished us a nice weekend.  

I think the purpose was to bring arrogant high school students a little perspective on how small we were.  Most of use went home thinking, "Wow!  I am a mote of dust on a speck of sand in the middle of a desert."  If I had not been well versed in Scripture, that might have gone very badly.  Instead, I spent the weekend understanding that, while I am minuscule compared to the rest of the Lord's creation, I have a relationship with the One who created it.

This week, because of particularly intense magnetic storms on the sun, we have been witness to auroras farther south than we usually would.  While it was too cloudy for me to see them at my home, my Twitter feed has been filled with photographs taken by people with their phones that capture beauty that would be hard to call anything but glorious.  The photo here was taken by one of my Twitter friends in Georgia.  Georgia!  That's really far south to be seeing these phenomena that are usually witnessed only above the Arctic Circle.  As a science teacher, I am struck as much by its beauty as anyone, but I also have the ability to be awed by its cause.  The Earth's magnetic field, caused by the spinning, molten iron outer core deflects 99% of the charged particles we call solar winds.  If it did not, there would be no life on this planet as the high-velocity charged particle would interfere with DNA formation.  These lights are caused by the effects of the 1% that gets through at the magnetic north and south poles.  These particles are minuscule, but their effect is powerful (and beautiful).

I've taught basic chemistry to 8th graders for 25 years, and I have always been captivated by the idea that the electron, which is the smallest subatomic particle, so small we don't even count its mass, is responsible for all chemical reactions.  Electrons run the modern world, yet when they were discovered, nobody cared (well, not nobody - scientists cared a lot - but the average member of the public thought it was unnecessary spending that could have been used for other things).  They didn't understand that something so small could, in fact, be so valuable.

I don't really know where I am going with this, but the auroras this week have me thinking a lot about how much small things matter.  I received a note recently in which a friend said that it was a conversation with me that led her to the job she now has.  For me, this conversation was small - I don't remember having it.  But it had a big impact for her.  I've had similar revelations from alumni over the years, about advice I gave them while sitting on the floor in the hallway, just having a chat.  My pastor likely does not know that the eye contact he gives members who come forward for communion may be the only eye contact someone gets that week.  He doesn't see how excited small children are after he gives them a high five, but I see them turn around grinning because he made them feel like the most important kid in the world.

We know from chaos theory that small things matter in complex systems.  Teachers, we don't know what impact might be had from our kind words, helpful actions, loving notes, or smile on a day someone needs it.  We also don't know what impact might be had from our unkind words, honking horn, or impatient tone.  There is grace for our most human moments, but we must be careful because the smallest things matter.  As Todd Whitaker says, "The best thing about being a teacher is that it matters.  The hardest thing about being a teacher is that it matters every day."  Go out this week and do small things, knowing they are powerful and important.

Our Role in Their Anxiety

Look at any psychological study, and you will find that we have been in a pandemic for a while.  No.  Not that one.  We are in an anxiety pandemic.  It started before Covid, but the events of 2020-2021 certainly didn't help.  

The blame is usually laid at the feed of the smartphone and social media.  And I don't disagree.  That is certainly a large part of it, which I will address later in this post.  But I also think we, as adults, like to blame the phone so that we can avoid the hard work of taking a look at ourselves.  As long as it is the phone's fault, it's not my fault.  But that's not going to fix anything.  We need to look at what WE can do to help reduce the anxiety in our teens, and that cannot happen until we look at the role we unwittingly play in it.

They need adults to be parents and teachers, not friends - A few decades ago, there was a weird shift in parenting.  Parents started referring to their kids as their friends and said their goal was that their kids would be happy.  This is a big contrast to the previous generation who said their goal was for their kids to be good citizens.  Teachers sort of adopted that attitude too, and we started seeing changes in classroom management as well as parenting.  It sounds loving, but kids don't respond well to this approach.  On the surface, they would probably articulate that they want easygoing adults who don't tell them what to do, but deep down, they know that parents and teachers are supposed to be the safe people who set loving boundaries.  Without that, they are left to figure out what this beneficial and what is dangerous about the world on their own, and that is scary.  As for happiness, it's too elusive to be a goal.  There are objective measures that can be observed to know if you have achieved the goal of being a successful citizen, but there isn't a way to know if you have "achieved" happiness.  If I accomplish something,  I'll likely be happy about it, so setting achievable goals might be the way to lead to happiness rather than making happiness the goal.  Not knowing whether or not they are happy increases their anxiety.

Too Much (Adult) Information - Since parents viewed their kids as friends, they started talking to them like they talked to their friends, including adult topics to big for kids to handle.  Prior generations worried about having the money to send their kids to college, but they didn't tell their kids about that worry.  People started placing such value on authenticity that they stopped recognizing that kids' brains aren't able to handle adult problems.  They can't help you with your marital problems, so they don't need to know about them.  The phrase "age appropriate" used to be a thing, and we need to restore that concept because treating them like short adults is only serving to increase their anxiety.  

Overpacking Their Schedules - I hear adults complain frequently about the amount of chauffering they have to do, taking their kids to music lessons, dance lessons, and practice for their year-round soccer team.  They get their kids home in the evening and then complain that the school has assigned homework because now their kids don't have time to ride their bikes and play.  Some of these same parents want to have their students dual enrolled in high school and college simultaneously.  The common phrase is "there's not enough time to . . . "  Yet, we have the same 24-hour days and 7-day weeks that people had back when they had to do everything by hand.  We have made choices for ourselves and our kids about how to spend time.  Extracurricular activities are good.  Pursuing passions is good.  But, time is like money; there is only so much of it, and it must be spent thoughtfully.  If you have spent time on one thing, that time is no longer available for something else.  Ask yourself why they are involved in so many things.  Is it because you think they HAVE to be involved in everything to get into college.  Let me tell you some stories of very happy kids who got into college without packing their schedule full of everything under the sun.  Recognize that there is no prize for finishing college early, and let them be in high school while they are in high school.  If all of this scheduling is about pursuing their passion, chances are they care a lot about one of the things, not all of them.  Prioritize that one.  Your child will graduate with better mental health and head into adulthood just as well as those who are frazzled.

Pressure - Watch the news.  The world is not in good shape.  From environmental issues to acts of mass violence to political division, things are very much not as they should be.  Kids know this more than we did at their age because they have access to so much information.  They also know this is the world they will inherit, and they see that adults are more concerned with their own rights than they are about fixing anything.  Kids feel that they are going to be required to "save the world" and know they don't have that capacity.  Teachers, we must be careful not to communicate to them that it is their job to fix it.  That's not fair, and it's not good for their developing brains.

Limit Phone Use - The phones and screens are, in fact, a problem.  Prior to Covid, a lot of parent and teacher discussion was about limiting screen time.  That went completely out the window during lockdown (and understandably so).  It's time to revive that discussion.  Kids cannot buy themselves a phone, and you have the ability to resist giving them one.  I know it is hard to think they won't have what other kids have, but the evidence of every study shows that delaying their access to phones and social media is best. Perhaps a group of parents can get together and make a pact to delay purchasing phones for them until 9th grade.  Then, you wouldn't have to worry about your child being "the only one."  At the very least, get it out of their bedrooms.  Back when computers were larger, we put them in public areas of the house and installed filters for accountability.  The same should apply to the small computer in their pocket.  Boundaries are healthy.  

None of this is easy.  I'm not going to pretend otherwise.  But it is necessary.  We cannot keep raising kids steeped in anxiety.  We just can't.